The ceremony of the farewell was almost more than she could endure. She did not listen to her mother’s gentle advice; she was unaware of the Queen’s anxiety. There was only one need within her: this overwhelming hunger for Philip.
Isabella did not leave Laredo until the armada had passed out of sight. Then only did she turn away, ready for the journey back to Madrid.
‘God preserve her,’ she prayed. ‘Give her that extra care which my poor Juana so desperately needs.’
* * *
Young Catalina was watching for her mother’s return.
This, she thought, is what will happen to me one day. My mother will accompany me to the coast. Perhaps not to Laredo. To what town would one go to embark for England?
Juana had gone off gaily. Her shrill laughter had filled the Palace during her last days there. She had sung and danced and talked continually of Philip. She was shameless in the way she talked of him. It was not the way Catalina would ever talk of Arthur, Prince of Wales.
But I will not think of it, Catalina told herself. It is far away. My mother will not let me go for years and years … even if the King of England does say he wishes me to be brought up as an English Princess.
Her sister Isabella came into the room and said: ‘Still watching, Catalina?’
‘It seems so long since Mother went away.’
‘You will know soon enough when she returns. Watching will not bring her.’
‘Isabella, do you think Juana will be happy in Flanders?’
‘I do not think Juana will be happy and contented anywhere.’
‘Poor Juana. She believes she will live happily for ever when she is married to Philip. He is so handsome, she says. They even call him Philip the Handsome.’
‘It is better to have a good husband than a handsome one.’
‘I am sure Prince Arthur is good. He is only a boy yet. It will be years before he marries. And Emanuel is good too, Isabella.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Isabella, ‘Emanuel is good.’
‘Are you going to marry him?’
Isabella shook her head and turned away.
‘I am sorry I mentioned it, Isabella,’ said Catalina. ‘It reminds you, doesn’t it?’
Isabella nodded.
‘Yes,’ said Catalina, ‘you were happy, were you not? Perhaps it was better to have found Alonso such a good husband even though he died so soon … better than to have married a husband whom you hated and who was unkind to you.’
Isabella looked thoughtfully at her young sister. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was better than that.’
‘And you have seen Emanuel. You know him well. You know he is kind. So, Isabella, if you should have to marry him, perhaps you will not be so very unhappy. Portugal is near home … whereas …’
Isabella suddenly forgot her own problems and looked into the anxious eyes of her little sister. She put her arm about her and held her tightly.
‘England is not so very far away either,’ she said.
‘I have a fear,’ Catalina answered slowly, ‘that once I am there I shall never come back … never see you all again. That is what I think would be so hard to bear … never to see you and Juan, Maria and our father … and mother … never to see Mother …’
‘I thought that. But, you see, I came back. Nothing is certain, so it is foolish to say “I shall never come back.” How can you be sure?’
‘I shall not say it. I shall say: “I will come back,” because only if I did could I bear to go.’
Isabella put her sister from her and went to the window. Catalina followed.
They saw two men riding fast up the slope to the Palace.
Catalina sighed with disappointment, because she knew they were not of the Queen’s party.
‘We shall soon discover who they are,’ said Isabella. ‘Let us go to Juan. The messengers will have been taken to him if they have important news.’
When they reached Juan’s apartments, the messengers had already been conducted to him and he was ordering that they be taken away and given refreshments.
‘What is the news?’ Isabella asked.
‘They come from Arevalo,’ said Juan. ‘Our grandmother is very ill and calls constantly for our mother.’
* * *
The Queen entered the familiar room, the memory of which she felt would haunt her with sadness for as long as she lived.
As soon as she had arrived at Madrid she had set out for Arevalo, praying that she would not be too late and yet half hoping that she would be.
In her bed lay the Dowager Queen of Castile, Isabella’s ambitious mother, that Princess of Portugal who had suffered from the scourge of her family and whose mental aberrations had darkened her daughter’s life.
It was because of her mother that Isabella felt those shocks of terror every time she noticed some fresh wildness in her daughter Juana. Had this madness in the royal blood passed one generation to flower in the next?
‘Is that Isabella …?’
The blank eyes were staring upwards, but they did not see the Queen, who leaned over the bed. They saw instead the little girl Isabella had been when her future was the greatest concern in the world to this mother.
‘Mother, dear Mother. I am here,’ whispered Isabella.
‘Alfonso, is that you, Alfonso?’
One could not say: Alfonso is dead, Mother … dead these many years. We do not know how he died, but we believe he was poisoned.
‘He is the true King of Castile …’
‘Oh, Mother, Mother,’ whispered Isabella, ‘it is all so long ago. Ferdinand and I rule all Spain now. I became more than the Queen of Castile.’
‘I do not trust him …’ the tortured woman cried.
Isabella laid a hand on her mother’s clammy forehead. She called to one of the attendants. ‘Bring scented water. I would bathe her forehead.’
The sick woman began to laugh. It was hideous laughter, reminding Isabella of those days when she and her young brother, Alfonso, had lived here in this gloomy palace of Arevalo with a mother who lost a little more of her reason with the passing of each day.
Isabella took the bowl of water from the attendant.
‘Go now and leave me with her,’ she said; and she herself bathed her mother’s forehead.
The laughter had lost its wildness. Isabella listened to the harsh breathing.
It could not be long now. She would call in the priests who would administer the last rites. But what would this sadly deranged, dying woman know of that? She had no idea that she was living through her last hours; she believed that she was a young woman again, fighting desperately for the throne of Castile that she might bestow it upon her son Alfonso or her daughter Isabella.
Still it was just possible that she might realise that it was Extreme Unction that was being administered; she might for a few lucid seconds understand the words of the priest.
Isabella stood up and beckoned one of the attendants who had been hovering in a corner of the apartment.
‘Your Highness …’ murmured the woman.
‘My mother is sinking fast,’ said Isabella. ‘Call the priests. They should be with her.’
‘Yes, Highness.’
Isabella went back to the bed and waited.
The Dowager Queen Isabella was lying back on her pillows, her eyes closed, her lips moving; and her daughter, trying to pray for her mother’s soul, could only find the words intruding into her prayers: ‘Oh God, You have made Juana so like her. I pray You, take care of my daughter.’
* * *
Catalina was eagerly awaiting the return of her mother from Arevalo, but it was long before she could be alone with her.
Since the little girl had learned that she was to go to England she could not spend enough time in her mother’s company. Isabella understood this and made a point of summoning Catalina to her presence whenever this was possible.
Now she dismissed everyone and kept Catalina with her; the joy on the face of the child was rewarding enough;
it moved Isabella deeply.
Isabella made Catalina bring her stool and sit at her feet. This, Catalina was happy to do; she sat leaning her head against her mother’s skirts, and Isabella let her fingers caress her youngest daughter’s thick chestnut hair.
‘Did it seem long that I was away then?’ she asked.
‘So long, Mother. First you went away with Juana, and then as soon as you had returned you must leave for Arevalo.’
‘We have had little time together for so long. We must make up for it. I rejoiced to be with my mother for a little while before she died.’
‘You are unhappy, Mother.’
‘Are you surprised that I should be unhappy now that I have no mother? You who, I believe, love your own mother, can understand that, can you not?’
‘Oh yes. But your mother was not as my mother.’
Isabella smiled. ‘Oh, Catalina, she has caused me such anxieties.’
‘I know it, Mother. I hope never to cause you one little anxiety.’
‘If you did it would be solely because I loved you so well. You would never do aught, I know, to distress me.’
Catalina caught her mother’s hand and kissed it fiercely. Such emotion frightened Isabella.
I must strengthen her, this tender little child, she thought.
‘Catalina,’ she said, ‘you are old enough to know that my mother was kept a prisoner, more or less, at Arevalo because … because her mind was not … normal. She was unsure of what was really happening. She did not know whether I was a woman or a little girl like you. She did not know that I was the Queen but thought that my little brother was alive and that he was the heir to Castile.’
‘Did she … frighten you?’
‘When I was young I was frightened. I was frightened of her wildness. I loved her, you see, and I could not bear that she should suffer so.’
Catalina nodded. She enjoyed these confidences; she knew that something had happened to make her relationship with her mother even more poignantly precious. This had taken place when she had discovered she was destined to go to England; and she believed that the Queen did not want her to go as an ignorant child. She wanted her to understand something of the world so that she would be able to make her own decisions, so that she would be able to control her emotions – in fact, so that she would be a grown-up person able to take care of herself.
‘Juana is like her,’ said Catalina.
The Queen caught her breath. She said quickly: ‘Juana is too high spirited. Now that she is to have a husband she will be more controlled.’
‘But my grandmother had a husband; she had children; and she was not controlled.’
The Queen was silent for a few seconds, then she said: ‘Let us pray together for Juana.’
She took Catalina’s hand and they went into that small anteroom where Isabella had set up an altar; and there they knelt and prayed not only for the safe journey of Juana but for her safe and sane passage through life.
Afterwards they went back to the apartment and Catalina sat once more on her stool at the Queen’s feet.
‘Catalina,’ said Isabella, ‘I hope you will be friends with the Archduchess Margaret when she comes. We must remember that she will be a stranger among us.’
‘I wonder whether she is frightened,’ Catalina whispered, trying not to think of herself setting out on a perilous journey across the sea to England.
‘She is sixteen years old, and she comes to a strange country to marry a young man whom she has never seen. She does not know that in our Juan she will have the kindest, dearest husband anyone could have. She has yet to learn how fortunate she is. But while she is discovering this I want you and your sisters to be very kind to her.’
‘I shall, Mother.’
‘I know you will.’
‘I would do anything you asked of me … gladly I would do it if you commanded me.’
‘I know it, my precious daughter. And when the time comes for you to leave me you will do so with good courage in your heart. You will know, will you not, that wherever I am and wherever you are, I shall never forget you as long as I live.’
Catalina’s lips were trembling as she answered: ‘I will never forget it. I will always do my duty as you would have me do it. I shall not whimper.’
‘I shall be proud of you. Now take your lute, my dearest, and play to me awhile; for very soon we shall be interrupted. But never mind, I shall steal away from state duties and be with you whenever it is possible. Play to me now, my dearest.’
So Catalina brought her lute and played; but even the gayest tunes sounded plaintive because Catalina could not dismiss from her mind the thought that time passed quickly and the day must surely come when she must set out for England.
* * *
Those were sad weeks for the Queen. She was in deep mourning for her mother, and there had been such tempests at sea that she feared for the safety of the armada which was escorting Juana to Flanders.
News came that the fleet had had to put into an English port because some of the ships had suffered damage during the tempest. Isabella wondered how Don Fadrique Enriquez was managing to keep the wild Juana under control. It would not be easy and the sooner she was married to Philip the better.
But travelling by sea was a hazardous affair and it might well be that Juana would never reach her destination.
A storm at sea might rob Ferdinand of his dearest dream. If Juana were lost on her way to Flanders, and Margaret on her way to Spain, that would be the end of the proposed Habsburg alliance. Isabella could only think of the dangers to her children, and her prayers were constant.
She tried to concentrate on other matters, but it was not easy to shut out the thought of Juana in peril; and since the recent death of her mother she had had bad dreams in which the sick woman of Arevalo often changed into the unstable Juana.
She was fortunate, she told herself, in her Archbishop of Toledo. Others might rail against him, criticise him because he had taken all the colour and glitter from his office, because he was as stern and unrelenting in his condemnation of others as he was of himself. But for him Isabella had that same admiration which she had had – and still had – for Tomás de Torquemada.
Tomás had firmly established the Holy Inquisition in the land, and Ximenes would do his utmost to maintain it. They were two of a kind and men whom Isabella – as sternly devout as they were themselves – wished to have about her.
She knew that Ximenes was introducing reforms in the Order to which he belonged. It had always seemed deplorable to him that many monks, who appeared in the Franciscan robes, did not follow the rules which had been set down for them by their Founder. They loved good living; they feasted and drank good wine; they loved women, and it was said that many of them were the fathers of illegitimate children. This was something to rouse fury in a man such as Ximenes and, like Torquemada, he was not one to shrug aside the weaknesses of others.
Therefore Isabella was not entirely surprised when, one day while she mourned her mother and waited anxiously for news of Juana’s safe arrival in Flanders, she found herself confronted by the General of the Franciscan Order who had come from Rome especially to see her.
She received him at once and invited him to tell her his grievance.
‘Your Highness,’ he cried, ‘my grievance is this: the Archbishop of Toledo seeks to bring reforms into our Order.’
‘I know it, General,’ murmured the Queen. ‘He would have you all following the rules laid down by your Founder. He himself follows those rules and he deems it the duty of all Franciscans to do the same.’
‘His high position has gone to his head, I fear,’ said the General.
The Queen smiled gently. She knew that the General was a Franciscan of the Conventual Order while Ximenes belonged to the Observatines, a sect which believed it should follow the ways of the Founder in every detail. The Conventuals had broken away from these rigid rules, believing that they need not live the lives of monks to do good in the world. T
hey were good-livers, some of these Conventuals, and Isabella could well understand and sympathise with the desire of Ximenes to abolish their rules and force them to conform with the laws of the Observatines.
‘I crave Your Highness’s support,’ he went on. ‘I ask you to inform the Archbishop that he would be better employed attending to his duties than making trouble within the Order of which he is honoured to be a member.’
‘The Archbishop’s conduct is a matter for his own conscience,’ said Isabella.
The General forgot he was in the presence of the Queen of Spain. He cried out: ‘What folly is this! To take such a man and set him up in the highest position in Spain! Archbishop of Toledo! The right hand of the King and Queen. A man who is more at home in a forest hut than in a Palace. A man without ability, without noble birth. Your Highness should remove him immediately from this high office and put someone there who is worthy of the honour.’
‘I think,’ said Isabella quietly, ‘that you are mad. Have you forgotten to whom you speak?’
‘I am not mad,’ replied the General. ‘I know I am speaking to Queen Isabella – she who will one day be a handful of dust … even as I or anyone else.’
With that he turned from her and hurried out of the room.
Isabella was overcome by astonishment, but she did not seek to punish this man.
She was astounded though at the hatred which Ximenes engendered, but she was more certain than she had ever been that, in making him Archbishop of Toledo, she had made a wise choice.
* * *
Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros lay in his bed in his house at Alcalá de Henares. He preferred this simpler dwelling to the Palace which could have been his home at Toledo, and there were often times when he yearned for his hermit’s hut in the forest of Our Lady of Castañar.
Daughters of Spain Page 5